The symbol of the skull embodies the work of Anke Land. For her, it is an icon of the preciousness of life; it represents not a memento mori but a memento vivere. By weaving in gold, she instills the skull with light, so it shimmers in the fabric: when you walk past, in one moment you see only the brilliance of gold; in the next you clearly see the skull. Thus it conveys the fragility and the fleeting nature of life.This symbol connects all aspects of her work: brief moments captured in her diary drawings; the transience and decay in her tapestries of forests and trees; the hopeless vulnerability of migrants; the eternity of Charon the ferryman, transporting the dead to the underworld.

In her recent work Anke Land depicts humans in search of a new existence—a search they often pay for with their lives. The skull, then, also channels the pirate flag, once hoisted as a symbol of power and invincibility, but now a talisman to protect terrified and vulnerable people. The passengers on boats in her woven scenes seem to reach up, rising in gold like the phoenix from the flames.

Land works first as a draftsman, drawing with bold speed, yet still a direct and firm hand, in response to media images. She creates diary entries with pen, ink and paint on clear, transparent film and on this volatile material she captures impressions of people and events.

But Land has been searching for a way to make her work more tactile, and found this quality in weaving. In the TextilelLab in Tilburg (Netherlands) her work is rendered into computer data, guiding the loom to weave her tapestries. For Land, weaving in layers is the perfect technique for depicting the meaning of her work in physical terms. Within some parts of the scene the layers are woven tightly together, while in other parts they lie loosely and transparently over each other.

In these woven tapestries the scenes become even more timeless, more elusive, more wrapped in history than they do in her drawings. In this way, Land lends a historical resonance to current events: the craftsmanship of weaving connecting the past to the present . Her tapestries are woven with reflective materials so that when they catch the light they glow intensely, in accordance with traditional crafsmanship but with the abstraction of modern imagination.